5 questions about the Gulfshore Playhouse New Works Festival — and 5 answers

As a nursery for nascent theater, the Gulfshore Playhouse New Works Festival is nothing the big bad wolf will blow down.

It has been through a hurricane — Irma — that sent actors who had already arrived scampering home after rehearsals had started. It has toughed out two years of pandemic cancellations that have toppled legacy new-play forums like the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky, and The Lark in New York.

That tenacity has made it more important than ever, according to Kristen Coury, Gulfshore Playhouse producing artistic director.

1987 Buick Grand National gets makeover in Naples on TV show 'Ride of Your Life'

100-plus things to do in September: Evening on Fifth is Thursday, Baker Museum reopened

"As a results of pandemic, or maybe other reasons that came to a head in the pandemic, a lot of the new play development series or companies have closed their doors this past years," Coury said. "We've always had a plan to expand the New Works Festival when we got to the new building. Now we have a real raison d'etre."

That suggests the first question:

You're back, but are you planning the same festival you're known for?

Not quite, said Coury. In its return is a new format for the festival. Three plays selected from submissions will receive its traditional 14½ hours of discussion, coaching and rehearsal. Then, for two specially selected plays, not necessarily among those submissions, Gulfshore Playhouse is lavishing 30 hours of discussion and retooling, or curating, as Coury termed it.

Both the playwright and the director relish that intensity, say Brent Askari, playwright for  the opening work, "The Refugees," and its director, Marshall Jones III (director of "Radio Golf," in 2021). It is one of the two being curated.

The other is from former Gulfshore Playhouse associate artistic director Jeffrey Binder, who has written a full-length version of his play “Remember: The Story of Abe Price.” "Remember" follows the late Naples resident through his years surviving before, during and after the Holocaust.

Why work so hard to perform a play without staging?

Immortality has a lot to do with this.

"The staging is minimal, to help to tell the story," Jones said. The actors don't even have to fret over lost lines: "They’ll have the script in hand, which is actually important in the development process, because you don't have costumes and lights and the scenery.

"If the story can’t stand on its own without those elements, then you've got a problem."

Why see a totally unknown work instead of a famous familiar one?

It's a chance to track a story more primally, still close to the environment that inspired the writer's material, and Askari is a prime example. His play, "The Refugees," upends the familiar media perspective to plant an upscale Connecticut family, trying to escape chaos in their own country, in a different nation with a new culture. Askari mined its premise from his childhood in a Persian-American family.

"My father's side of the family is from Iran, and when I was a kid, growing up in Austin, Texas, the Iran Revolution was going on. I was really little, but all these relatives started showing up at our house. Cousins were living with us, and this little kid was saying, 'What's going on?'" he recalled. "That was a very formative experience for me."

"I think with refugees, people tend to think, that's somewhere else, over there. And when I look back to my Iranian family, I think they thought that was something that was never going to happen to them, either."

"My father's side of the family is Iranian Shite Muslim, and my mother's side is New England WASP Episcopalians —  a very interesting mix. It caused me to think: This happened to one side of my family. What if it were to happen to the other side?"

Because this is a workshop, does the play get changed from the time rehearsal begins to the time we see it?

Workshopped plays almost always develop.

Jones directed a new work a year as producing artistic director of Crossroads Theatre Company, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and he said he tends to hold his opinions.

"For me it's important to understand the playwright's vision. For example, I might say I didn't really appreciate this character because of x, y and z and he might say, well, the character's supposed to be x, y and z," Jones said. "I like to reserve my opinions until after I feel I've gotten inside the writer's head."

But the actors bring their own character vision, their own questions and their own criticism. Askari said his first day was a writing frenzy after he listened to his characters' comments.

"The actors invest in these characters they're going to play and they're trying to live inside them. They have opinions and thoughts and impressions that are very specific and can evade the person writing it until they're pointed out," Askari said. "Today I'm coming in with tons of new pages. I killed several trees just because of all the great conversation."

But there's more: an audience talk-back Q&A with the playwright after each play. So there are still some chances the material will be tweaked. In this workshop, everyone has a chance to contribute.

"If the script does not change, someone's not working right," Jones observed. "Our goal is to support Brent's vision, and make a very good script into a great script."

Is "The Refugees" running through the entire weekend?

In a new play festival, each play generally only runs once. However, throughout the weekend three other new plays and the second curated play are planned:

• "Compromised," 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 16. By Mike Bencivenga. What starts as a good deed from a celebrity journalist slips into some revelations of nasty truths that his recipients can't unlearn. A Eugene O'Neil drama award runner-up.

• "A Danger to Yourself and Others," 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 17. By Collette Mazuinik. Everything happens to Eddie. He comes into a convenience store to try small-time robbery and falls for the clerk instead. It gets even crazier from there.

• "Remember," 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 17. Former Gulfshore Playhouse associate artistic director Jeffrey Binder's has written a full version of his play “Remember: The Story of Abe Price.”

• James of Nazareth," 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 18. The New Testament beginnings from the perspective of Jesus' brother, James, who's stuck holding the family together while Jesus is out preaching to thousands.

Harriet Howard Heithaus covers arts and entertainment for the Naples Daily News/naplesnews.com. Reach her at 239-253-8936.

When: Thursday through Sunday, Sept. 15-18; various times, see story

Where: Norris Community Center,  755 Eighth Ave. S., Naples

Tickets: $20

To buy: gulfshoreplayhouse.org 

This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: New Works Festival returns young drama, comedy to Gulfshore Playhouse